Guidelines for Researchers Using an Adapted Consensual Qualitative Research Approach in Management Research

Abstract

This article offers an approach to conducting qualitative research in Management Studies by providing researchers with guidelines to apply Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR). Although in the pursuit for structure, management researchers may be cautious of using qualitative research, CQR offers a structured qualitative research design option. The article explains how an adapted CQR design aligns well with most structured qualitative research methods. To describe an adapted CQR method, a research example based in Management Studies was used. This research example involved the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework that identified the various components of organisational reputation and reputation management and aimed at describing the role of social media within this framework. The primary research design of the research example consisted of two phases. The first phase comprised of an organisational policy document analysis. The second phase consisted of qualitative in‑depth, semi‑structured interviews with various departmental or divisional heads aimed at enriching the data collected using document analysis of specific policy documents. In both phases, a research team was employed as well as an auditing or verification system in keeping with the CQR method, where the research team considered the data codes, data coding, analysis and interpretation throughout the research process. This article further outlines the process followed and provides coding structures, which could be adopted for other similar studies. Ten CQR guidelines are proposed, which management researchers could apply when using document analysis in Management Studies as well as three guidelines for using interview transcripts from semi‑structured interviews. The CQR research process foundation was the research team approach adopted when analysing, coding and reporting on data collected. The adoption of a method such as CQR, or a modified version thereof, allows for a team of researchers to institute a process of validation to the research process and the results by thoroughly examining their own individual understandings of the data.